On April 11 this year, the boys' father, Andy, a paramedic, died at 47 of esophageal cancer. "Andy had taken a lot of comfort from the dog," says his brother, Reuben.

He would sit on the back deck with Mika, listening to the birds in the forest immediately behind their home in the town of about 6500 people.

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"Before he died, he told the boys, 'Whenever you think of me, go and give Mika a hug'.''

While we are here, they find Mika's remains under the ashes of what had been the kitchen table.

Home alone when the inferno swept through Emma Parade about 2pm on Thursday, she must have been ''cowering under the table," says Reuben Love.

Tarro's despair at this news is unbearable. His mother sobs in the arms of a friend.

"It's too much for her," says her mother-in-law, Mary Love.

Their loss is just one of many in the neighbourhood, where similar stories are burnt in the landscape.

And with temperatures set to soar in coming days, the pain will surely continue.

Emma Parade runs downhill along a ridge, with houses on either side, and descends into surrounding bush gullies.

On the western side of the street, every house, from number 20 to number 40, was gutted by the firestorm that raged up the western gully.

Down the hill from the Loves', number 42 stands unscathed. At number 40, school teacher Bruce Fox stands on the street, shaking his head at the charred skeleton of what has been his family home for the past 18 years. "Incredible," he says.

Around the corner in Sunny Ridge Road, at a 2.20pm, Premier Barry O'Farrell stands before another three razed houses and concurs with Mr Fox's sentiments when he reports what he has just seen from a helicopter: "You scratch your head as to why certain houses have been lost and others haven't."

Alongside him, Rural Fire Services Commissioner Shane Fitzsimmons describes the epic scale of these fires: 86,000 hectares burnt; fire perimeters stretching 400 to 500 kilometres; 94 fires still burning, 27 uncontained and two with emergency warnings, one on the Central Coast and one nearby, now threatening Springwood High School.

Winmalee and the surrounding suburbs of Springwood and Yellow Rock were the centre of the devastating fires.

A count in Yellow Rock late on Saturday revealed that 30 houses were lost in one street. Paulwood Street in Winmalee lost five. Residents say 43 were lost in Buena Vista.

Emma Parade is just one street in this roll call.

"Ironically," says Bruce Fox, "four of us in this street who lost their homes are volunteers with the Community Fire Unit. We met once a month. The dads' army."

Only on Sunday did they hold their last drill with the fire hose at the bottom of the street, in the fishhook cul de sac.

There, yet another house burned to the ground on Thursday.

Evangeline Love was among the volunteers at that meeting, Mr Fox says.

The flames leapt the street in line with number 38 and consumed numbers 39 and 37 and another two homes on the battle-axe blocks behind them.

But all other homes on the eastern side are spared.

So are the boat and caravan outside number 39, where Kim Bartush seems remarkably accepting of her fate. She is with her son Patrick and daughter-in-law Kate, who fear their home, too, has been destroyed by fire in nearby Cooroy Crescent, Yellow Rock. They were not allowed to return to the street to find out, but they have heard only four houses are still standing in their street. Kim's Bartush's other son, Chris, was married last weekend. All the wedding gifts had been stored his parents' home.

"All gone," says Mrs Bartush. "My husband, Dave, had to get out yesterday afternoon with the dog."

Their cat was left behind but someone posted its image on Facebook, and now it is recovering at the vet with burns.

As we speak, she hears another cat meowing in the drain beneath out feet.

Neighbours come to mount a rescue operation for Moo-Moo, which belongs to the next-door neighbour, George Kozumplik, who has just arrived with his wife and two teenage daughters to find the their house similarly reduced to rubble.

"I've found our photos," Mr Kozumplik sighs, an attempt at humour as he lifts a charred computer hard drive.

Their photos - and whatever else was stored on that drive - are gone.

Up the hill at number 28, little remains standing but the Romanesque statues in the front garden. These truly are ruins.

At 3pm, Prime Minister Tony Abbott arrives at nearby Winmalee Fire Brigade for briefings on the three major fire grounds threatening the Blue Mountains and beyond towards Lithgow.

"It has been a long, hot, dry season for the past three months," he says, then warns. "It's projected that over the next three months most parts of New South Wales will have above-average temperatures and below-average rainfalls."

While he thanked employers for allowing volunteers time off work to fight these fires, he implored them to be patient and do the same in the coming fire season, Mr Abbott pays tribute to the ordinary people driven to heroic feats on extraordinary days like these.

Commissioner Fitzsimmons says he has never guaranteed - and will never be able to - enough warning time when the elements turn so quickly as they did on Thursday, with extreme heat and high winds.

Nor can he guarantee bodies will not be found when some of the hundreds of razed houses are searched.

He says they can only meet this challenge "fire by fire, street by street".

Emma Parade, Winmalee, is just one of those streets.

A Ridgeback has greeted the Premier to his news conference. Sadly, there was no mistake around the corner in Emma Parade.